Part of the brilliance of idleword's approach in this talk is in his avoidance of Godwin-level rhetoric. You don't need to posit an authoritarian dictatorship to see big data as hazardous. "Nixon in your datacenter" is the perfect image for this purpose, because it's funny in a way that "Hitler in your datacenter" never could be, and also easier to imagine.
Yeh, I realised that, hence my apology. But IBM's involvement with the Third Reich is an example where the nightmare of data retention leading to mass murder has already happened.
Every time you tick the boxes on in the equal opportunities compliance area you could be setting yourself up for disaster.
If you were a Ugandan student in Britain in 2000 you might have ticked the "[ ] Homosexual" box and had the nightmare of The Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, passed by the Parliament of Uganda on 20 December 2013 with the death penalty proposal dropped in favour of life in prison. [1]
